Syrian army managed to regain control on Thursday over the Quneitra border crossing in the Golan Heights, a few hours after being seized by the so-called ‘free Syrian army.’

According to the Syrian news agency SANA, units of the Syrian national army inflicted the armed groups heavy losses, in a series of military operations carried out Thursday in the areas of Hujeira, Saqba, Adra and Nabek in Damascus countryside.

Several militants were killed, including mercenaries of different nationalities fighting in Syria.

Upon recapturing Quneitra, the Zionist army enforced preparedness in the occupied Golan and installed Arrow-2 missiles.

In the same context, Army units continued chasing militiamen in al-Harak and western al-Mleha neighborhoods in Daraa countryside, hitting on them direct shots.

A military source told SANA that the operations have resulted in number of militants killed and injured, along with destroying their weapons and confiscating a 90-b cannon.

“Nezar Mohammad Abdul Rahman al-Haraki, commander of the so-called ‘Martyrs’ of Western al-Mleha’ was among those killed,” the source added.

The Syrian army vowed on Wednesday to crush terrorist insurgents in every corner across Syria, after recapturing the strategic border city of al-Qusayr.

The Army launched on May 19 a large-scale operation in the city to clear the area of terrorist gangs and liberate the citizens stuck there.

Syria was hit by a violent unrest since mid-March 2011, where the Syrian government accuses foreign actors of orchestrating the conflict, by supporting the militant opposition groups with arms and money.

The US has strongly condemned Syrian Army’s liberation of the country’s border city of Qusayr, which had served as the major stronghold of foreign-sponsored armed insurgents that sought to overthrow Syria’s government.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the al-Assad regime’s assault on al-Qusayr, which has killed untold numbers of civilians and is causing tremendous humanitarian suffering,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed in a Wednesday statement.

The apparent US rage over the success of the Syrian forces to drive out the foreign-backed militant gangs that have terrorized the nation over the past two years, comes amid widely reported US plans to offer direct military support to the anti-Damascus militants with the announced aim of overthrowing the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The White House official further called for “safe access” to evacuate injured insurgents and provide “medical supplies,” a call that apparently was not considered worthy of a response by Syrian officials.

Washington has also blasted the Lebanese Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah for its support role behind the Syrian military triumph over the insurgents, who received massive amounts of arms and supplies from US-backed regimes in the region, including Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and even the Israeli regime.

This is while Hezbollah has described the recent military victory over Qusayr as a major blow to the US-Israeli-Takfiri triangle in Syria that sought to remove the only Arab government in the region that effectively remained behind Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.

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UN questions validity of French ‘evidence’ of Syria’s chemical weapons use

The United Nations has questioned the validity of what the French government says is “evidence” that the Syrian forces have used chemical weapons against militants.

French officials claimed on June 4 that they were in possession of “evidence,” based on laboratory tests, that proved nerve gas sarin had been used by the government forces in Syria.

The French government said it had handed the test results to a UN chemical weapons investigation team, which is led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom.

The UN said in a statement on Wednesday, “Yesterday in Paris, Mr. Sellstrom received additional information related to the reports of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria submitted by the government of France.”

The statement added that Sellstrom had cautioned that the “validity of the information is not ensured.”

Around 14 rockets launched from across Syria have hit the eastern city of Baalbek on Wednesday night, injuring at least two people.

The rockets and mortars landed west of Baalbek in the areas of al-Sharawneh, al-Basatine and Iaat, leaving three children injured, and damaging a house owned by Kamal Ramadan, Lebanon’s As-Safir daily reported.

The National News Agency said however that 11 rockets had landed on the city’s outskirts. It did not say whether there were casualties in the attack.

Another three rockets that hit Hezbollah bastion Baalbek landed in the city center, a security source told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that several other missiles landed in areas near the city.

The British Time Magazine, in its issue published on Thursday, believed that Syrian President Bashar Assad has no interest in using chemical weapons whether on insurgents or civilians.

“It would seem logical that President Bashar Assad would try to avoid provoking the West into agreeing on a coordinated assault against his forces,” the magazine reported.

“Why would Assad want to use them [chemical weapons] at all? Chemical weapons, at least in small quantities, would seem redundant in the conflict, since Assad’s jets have effectively pummeled rebel areas for more than two years, inflicting crippling losses,” it added.

Moreover, the article issued stressed that Syria’s closest international ally Russia is a prominent signatory to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, and therefore there is no sense that President Assad would resort to such drastic measures.

“Russia was the country which had the most impact on Assad in terms of whether he would use chemical weapons or not,” the Time quoted Dina Esfandiary, research associate in the nonproliferation and disarmament program at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), as saying.

“Assad would seem to have little gain by deploying them now, especially at a time when his forces are gaining ground. Perhaps because it makes little obvious sense, US and British officials seem reluctant to rush to judgment, especially since false information about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction led the US and Britain to invade Iraq in 2003. In fact, Saddam had none,” the reporter mentioned.

The article further argued that under the terms of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, there is no legal obligation for the world to intervene to stop their use, and therefore any foreign intervention, whatever the type, is unsolicited.